Ahead of Possible Miami 2024, The Drum is producing a special five-part series focusing on leading CMOs and how their roles are evolving. This week, Progressive CMO Remi Kent shares her thoughts on AI's impact on the advertising industry and the steps marketers can take to get the most out of this powerful technology.
For over a year now, generative AI has been a hot topic in the marketing world, playing an ever-increasing role and slowly but surely, if we believe the more evangelical voices, revolutionizing the industry .
For Remi Kent, chief marketing officer at insurance giant Progressive, AI doesn't necessarily mean a creative paradigm shift on its own. True potential is only unlocked when teams understand how to leverage technology effectively. It's like a gold mine sitting in the middle of a mountain, waiting for a human with the right tools and, more importantly, the patience and desire to dig.
“There is no doubt that this technology is great, but it still requires a lot of human brainpower, effort, and trial and error to succeed,” Kent says. “Adding skills to the team to facilitate this type of effort will be an area of growth in our field.”
Later this month at Possible Miami, Kent will extrapolate this hands-on, learning-as-you-go approach to AI in a live discussion with Rex Briggs, the so-called “Founder of Marketing Evolution” from marketing trade association MMA Global. .
The two discuss the creative and strategic process that led to the development of AI-generated audio assets for MMA. According to Kent, this started by prompting an AI model to create multiple versions of a text script and accompanying synthetic narration.
Of course, human intervention and monitoring were key to this process. “We were able to create multiple versions in a short amount of time, but we had to make a lot of improvements along the way,” she says. “Early results look promising and encourage us to continue exploring possibilities.”
Kent is actively exploring the creative possibilities offered by AI-generated text, images, and audio, but she says the “holy grail” will be AI-generated video. .
Although the text-to-video model is still in its infancy, it has evolved rapidly in recent months. Sora surprised the world with a preview of its photorealistic video creation capabilities, a model that his OpenAI announced in February but has not yet been released to the public.
Kent believes the burgeoning video generation AI technology will become a powerful tool in marketing. “Video production is expensive and complex for advertisers, and being able to streamline that process could be a game-changer,” she says.
Recent advances in technology have caused both excitement and a degree of trepidation in the minds of many marketers. In the midst of such accelerating change, it can be difficult for individuals and teams to chart a course for the future.
When asked what steps CMOs can take right now to adapt to the ever-changing business and technology environment, Kent went back to first principles. First, she says, CMOs need to be business savvy and have “financial acumen, data fluency, and a clear understanding of what drives growth and profitability.”
Second, she must be able to “move at the speed of culture,” meaning she must be able to keep her finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist and continually keep up with the “fast-paced evolution of consumer expectations.” Must be, she suggests.
Finally, Kent says today's CMOs must have a strong understanding of and the ability to communicate the “direct link” between a brand's marketing efforts and its financial success.
And in the age of AI, she encourages a mindset that balances both the technology's vast opportunities and its drawbacks. So, essentially, the idea is that humans will continue to act more efficiently than AI. AI will replace many mundane, rote tasks, but it will free up marketers to focus on contributing things that AI can't replicate, “like human intuition and authentic emotional expression,” says Kent. He predicts.
Remi Kent, CMO of Progressive, will speak at Possible Miami on Tuesday. On April 16th at 2pm, she will inspire attendees with “Breakthroughs Powered by AI.” Click here to find out more and book tickets for the event.
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